Newfound love for Audiobooks
After an abysmal run with reading books in the middle of this year, I got back into the groove a few months ago. I’ve found audio books to be an enabling companion with this change. Inspite of briefly fiddling with them 3 years back, I never tried putting this to practice on my dreary office commutes.
Enlightened in a chat with one of the Uber ‘drivers’, I decided to give it a try. Just as I was about to activate an Audible subscription, I stumbled upon the digital catalogue offered by our county’s public library. What a discovery this turned out to be!
Digital books with Libby
Not only does the eLibrary offer tens of thousands of ebooks and audio books, they also have an excellent mobile app to boot, called Libby. Created by Overdrive, a popular reading platform for libraries and schools, this app can connect to thousands of public libraries by integrating with a library account.
Having used Libby for over 2 months now, I found the app to have great usability and an outstanding User Experience. While reading is comfortable on the app, with nifty options for improving the typeface, I often use the option to send books onto my Kindle. For audio books, the thoughtful navigation controls make it a delight to listen to books, in-app & on the go.
Given the relatively limited numbers of digital copies in the library, there is a slightly longer hold period to loan out most popular books. But its quite manageable if you have a large reading list and can time the books to place ‘hold’ in some sequence.
Eagerly anticipating the next traffic jam
Pulling out my wishlist from goodreads and augmenting it, I’ve been making a reading plan for the next few months. My office commutes and local travel is greatly optimized. Long walks with a headphone now look more enticing.
This has also become my perfect antidote to snarly traffic jams. So much so that, I’ve started looking forward to those days with peak hour traffic that keeps me out longer, and thus giving me precious additional time to stay immersed in a book’s narrative.
I’ve turned active promoter of the public digital library and audio books. Bringing this up with friends & neighbours, it surprises me that not many are aware of the option. If you have a library membership, do give this a shot.
